This is my traditional kit at the moment.
But an interesting thread on
WinterTrekking started me thinking about times when a rapid fire could be really critical no matter what. For some of us that might just the result of taking an unplanned dive from a canoe, but the example given was falling through lake ice into freezing water. Getting a fire going very quickly could be a matter of life or death in such deep winter conditions.
Now I always have a waterproof matchcase as EDC on my body so that is one thing and usually if I'm outdoors I have a few other primary methods about my person too. It's the next stage that is often problematic, we can't always rely on dry natural kindling being available.
Taking a 2L. waterproof box as my starting point, I have now collected all my spare primary lighting methods such as Ferro rod, matches, lifeboat matches, gas lighter, flint and steel and packed them separately in ziplock bags. Next there are tinders such as charcloth, linen tow, Vaselined cotton balls, rubber strips, Tindercard and Wetfire.
The next stage is addressed with waxed brown firelighters in the box and a couple of waxed firelogs packed and wrapped separately.
With this set up I can produce a warming fire in about a minute or two under critical conditions that is hot enough to dry and ignite damp fuel in a relatively short time even after total immersion of all my equipment.
I had most of this stuff lying around anyway so I was fortunate to have no outlay involved. It's not body carry of course but it takes no great space on a canoe or a sled.
In normal camp use the box lives in the top of one of my fuel / canoe barrels and it is just useful to have a single package for all this stuff which is normally rattling about loose in my kit somewhere.